


Better Together

by respoftw



Series: 2018 Hurt/Comfort Bingo [17]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Captivity, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missions Gone Wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 16:03:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: Rodney woke to the screaming of his legs, the pounding of his head and the strangely pleasant counterpoint of someone else’s fingers tangled with his own.Written for the SGA Reverse Bang 2018





	Better Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/gifts).
  * Inspired by [At Least They Were Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436270) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific). 



> Also fills the dungeon square of my hurt/comfort bingo card. Multitasking for the win.

Rodney woke to the screaming of his legs, the pounding of his head and the strangely pleasant counterpoint of someone else’s fingers tangled with his own.

Opening his eyes, Rodney was confused to find that he was sitting up instead of lying down.  He was even more confused to realise that his legs were bound together at the ankles - no doubt accounting for the screaming his leg muscles were still doing as they were forced to lie on the dusty dungeon floor at an awkward angle.

Frowning, Rodney backtracked on his thoughts for a moment before it hit him.   _Dungeon_. He was in a dungeon. He was tied up in a dungeon with absolutely no memory of how he came to be there.  Rodney shifted on the hard-packed dirt floor of his dungeon, attempting to ease the pain in his legs but felt something at his back stopping him.  It was then that Rodney remembered the feeling of fingers entwined with his own and he craned his neck over his shoulder to see Sheppard behind him.  There was no mistaking those ears and that hair.

Now that he was aware of it, he could feel Sheppard’s back pressed against his own, see the rough coil of rope looped around his waist.  He had no doubt that the same loop of rope would wind around Sheppard’s own waist, anchoring them together and - more importantly at this point - stopping Rodney from moving enough to give his legs a break.

“Sh’prd.”  Rodney’s voice came out much weaker than he had anticipated, barely making any noise in the eerily quiet dungeon.  That was really the only description he could use for the room, despite the weak sunlight pouring in from somewhere behind him.  The walls were made up of a light tan stone, hundreds of them cemented together to form their prison. The floor was hard-packed dirt and the one door that he could see from his position was solid wood, reinforced with some kind of metal.  He couldn’t see the source of the sunlight but he imagined whatever window was behind him would have bars on it. 

The last thing Rodney remembered, he was in the gate room of Atlantis, about to step through for another first contact mission in the ass-end of the Pegasus galaxy.  It didn’t take a genius to realise something must have gone wrong. The skin on Rodney’s right temple felt tight, the kind of tightness that came with blood drying onto his skin - a feeling that Rodney was sadly very familiar with after all his years on Atlantis.  A head injury could explain the gap in his memory as well as the weakness of his voice.

Clearing his throat, Rodney tried again.  

“Sheppard.”  There, that was a bit more forceful.  Unfortunately, John didn’t make any kind of response.  Suddenly panicked, Rodney’s fingers fumbled around John’s own, pressing hard enough to leave bruises.  John flinched, his arm jostling Rodney’s own and it was only then that Rodney realised his arms were entirely free from any kind of bonds. 

“What the hell kind of idiots forget to tie the arms?” he muttered. Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Rodney took advantage of his free arms to hit out at whatever parts of John’s body he could reach.

After a few hits, he felt John grab his hand.  

“Oh thank God,” he breathed out in relief.  “I thought you were dead.”

“Rodney?”  John sounded as confused as Rodney felt when he first woke but he seemed to take the whole situation in much more quickly.  John’s spine straightened as he took in the dungeon, Rodney’s back forced to move with it.

“Ow,” he complained.  “Warn a guy when you’re gonna move, would you?”

“We’re tied together,” John said, stating the blindingly obvious.  “Where’s the knot?”

Rodney, who had been about to point out the inanity of John’s comment on their predicament, blinked in sudden realisation.  Of course. With their arms free they could untie themselves. Patting at the coils of rope around them Rodney found what felt like the ends of the rope on his left side, just north of John’s hip.

“Here,” he said, putting pressure on the spot so John could find it.  “It’s, ah, it’s a little awkward for me to reach.”

“I got it.”  John batted Rodney’s hands away and started to work at the rope.  

Rodney waited, his head pounding in rhythm with the hammering of his pulse.  The ropes were thick and it took John almost ten minutes to work them free. As soon as they fell to the floor, Rodney moved his legs, groaning in relief as the muscles stretched.  He was still basking in the relief when John crouched beside him, working at the knots holding his ankles closed.

“You’re bleeding,” Rodney said, gingerly reaching out to skim his fingers a few centimetres over the gash on John’s left temple.  

John’s face was almost grey, grim-looking in the weak sunlight as he nodded in the direction of Rodney’s own head.  “So are you. You scared the shit out of me back there McKay. I thought you were dead. They hit you and it was like someone had cut the strings holding you up.  Remind me to work with you on ducking when we get back to Atlantis.”

Rodney touched the tight feeling skin around his own temple and hissed.  Gently, John pulled his hand away. “Yeah, maybe don’t do that.” John stood up and started to examine the door.

Rodney nodded weakly, looking around the entire room now that he could move more freely.  The window did have bars on it. He felt absurdly pleased to have guessed right.

“What happened?” he asked John.

John frowned, pausing in his examination of the solid dungeon door.  “You don’t remember?” 

Rodney gestured at his head, careful not to touch this time.  “No. We were about to leave for M9I-YT4 and then...I woke up here.”

John grimaced.  “Yeah, you’re not missing much.  We stepped through the gate, had barely walked a half mile when we were surrounded on all sides.  We managed to fight them off long enough to make a run for it back to the gate when you went down like a puppet with its strings cut.  I went back for you and - -”

“Ronon and Teyla?”

“They made it through the gate.”  

Rodney had known John long enough to hear the underpinning of doubt in his voice.  It was clear to him that John hadn’t seen them step through the gate but it was equally clear to him that John needed to believe that they had.

Rodney decided not to call him on the small lie.  Instead, he shakily pushed off the ground to his feet.  He wobbled slightly when he made it and John was there, holding his elbow and steadying him.  Rodney nodded in thanks and looked bleakly around the room.

“You think they’ll feed us?” he asked.  He was already hungry.

John shrugged.  “Your guess is as good as mine.  I’m sure we’ll find out soon.”

The discarded pile of rope on the floor caught Rodney’s eye.  “They’re not gonna be happy that we aren’t tied up anymore, are they?  Although what else they expected when they left our arms free, I don’t know.”  He looked at John, suddenly worried. “Do you think it was a test? Should we tie ourselves back up before they come back?”

John, who had moved to peer out the barred window, didn’t answer.  

“Sheppard?!” Rodney raised his voice to get John’s attention.  “Do you think we should tie ourselves up before they come back?”

John turned, his face even greyer than it was before.  “I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem,” he said, his voice slightly disconnected sounding.  Rodney hadn’t ever heard John sound like that - not even when he had a vampire bug attached to his neck.  He sounded defeated and - - John _never_ sounded defeated. The hair on Rodney’s skin started to rise in goosebumps.  Something was wrong. More wrong than being captured and locked in a dungeon warranted. That sort of thing was nothing to John.  That sort of a thing was a damn Tuesday to John and - -  _ the window _ .

Rodney moved, lurching on unsteady feet, to look out the window.

“No,” John said, rising moving to stop him, “don’t.”

It was too late.  Rodney was already there.

Corpses littered the ground outside their dungeon.  Dessicated husks that used to be people littered the ground. Everything around them, the buildings, the street carts, they were all silent.  A very particular flavour of silent. Rodney had seen this tableau on enough worlds to know exactly what had happened.

This world had been culled.  Recently. ‘ _ While they were locked in this room _ ’ recently.  There would be no-one left.  

No-one to help them escape.  No-one to stop them escaping.  No-one to rush when the door was unlocked.  No-one to unlock the door.

They were alone.

They were screwed.

* * *

John kicked at the door far longer than he needed to, far past the point it became clear to both of them that there was no breaking it down without a liberal pinch of C-4 to break it down for them.

Rodney gave up trying to get him to stop after the first hour, slumping to the floor of the dungeon to wait until John exhausted himself instead.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when John turned his attention to the barred window next.  John’s exhaustion was like a living presence in the room with them and his ineffectual tugs at the bars on the window wouldn’t have made much difference even if the bars had been made from cardboard.

Finally, long after the sun had set, hours after they had woken up, John’s shoulders fell and he collapsed onto the floor.  John’s heavy breathing sounded loud in the quiet of the dungeon, seeming to reverberate off the walls until Rodney felt like he was surrounded by the noise.

“Teyla and Ronon will be looking for us,” Rodney said, just to hear something other than those defeated gasps of air.  “The fact that this entire place has been culled just means that it will be easier for them to get us out of here.”

John didn’t answer, just lay there on the ground, his chest rising and falling with each breath.

“In fact, I’m sure they’re already here.  Teyla’s got a good head on her shoulders, she’d be smart enough to make sure the rescue party was loaded up with an LSD and since we’re the only life signs left they won’t even have to search for us; just turn the thing on and our two little dots will be blinking right at them.  Easiest rescue mission ever.” John’s silence was unnerving him. Rodney’s efforts to convince them both that everything would be fine were having the opposite effect on him. The more he said they would be here any moment, the more he doubted they would be here at all. God, maybe they hadn’t even made it through the gate.  Maybe they were locked up in a dungeon just like this one. 

Rodney had another, even worse, thought.  What if they  _ had  _ made it through the gate?  What if they  _ did  _ mount a rescue?  What if the rescue party walked right into a culling and they were all dead, either dried husks out there on the ground or being stored in the sticky webbing of a Wraith hive ship.

“They weren’t culled.”  John’s hand on his shoulder jerked Rodney from his spiralling thoughts.  

“You were panicking out loud,” John explained, his hand still gripping Rodney.  He looked into Rodney’s eyes and repeated his statement. “ _ They weren’t culled _ .”

Unlike John’s assurances that Ronon and Teyla had made it through the gate, Rodney could see that John truly believed this one.  

Rodney's momentary relief morphed into suspicion.  He was _ too  _ sure.

“How do you know that?  How can you know that?!”

John smiled weakly, his head thunking against the stone wall as he tipped it back to look at the ceiling.  “Because M9I-YT4 was covered in snow and out there,” John jerked his head at the window above their heads, “isn’t.”

Rodney grasped the reality of their situation immediately, something John must have known the whole time.  “They took us through the gate.”

“They took us through the gate,” John agreed, sounding way too calm for Rodney’s liking.

“Oh my God, they took us through the gate.  How the hell is Atlantis supposed to find us if they took us through the gate?  We could be anywhere. We could be….oh my god, we’re going to die here. They’re not going to find us and no-one is going to feed us or give us anything to drink - - We’re going to die of dehydration, we’re going to end up looking like those husks out there. We’re - - “

“RODNEY!” John’s face was suddenly right in front of his own, his hands pinning Rodney’s arms down at his sides.  For the first time since they realised what had happened, John looked resolute. He looked strong and determined and fierce and - - “Rodney,” he repeated, drawing Rodney’s thoughts back, “they  _ will  _ find us.  It’ll just take them a bit longer.  Zelenka can pull addresses from the gate right?”

“Yes, but - - “

“So, they’ll pull the addresses and they’ll search each one until they find us.”

Rodney shook his head.  “That’s - - we haven’t ever been able to narrow the DHD recall function down to less than 50 addresses and we can’t determine the order they were dialled or incoming from outgoing and - -”

“Teyla and Ronon will search every single one.  You know they will because we would do the same for them.  They’ll look until they find us. All we have to do is stay alive.”

“And just how do you propose we do that Colonel?” Rodney snapped.  “In case you’ve missed it, we’re trapped in this room with no water, no food, no hope.”

“We suck on our buttons,” John said.  “We still have our uniforms, plenty of buttons there.  That’ll keep the saliva flowing until we can figure out something else.  We might not be on M9I-YT4 anymore but, going by all the green out there, this place gets rain.  We can hang one of our boots out of the window, tie it to the bars by the shoelaces and collect rainwater.”

Rodney snapped off a button and put it in his mouth, sucking frantically.

“See,” John smiled.  “It works, right?”

“What about food?”  

“Well,” John looked around the room, his eyes zeroing in on a fat beetle-like insect that was crawling across the dirt floor.  “The human body can survive up to three weeks without food but we have some options before then.”

Rodney shook his head, knowing that there was no way he could eat a beetle, knowing that he would have to anyway.

“We’ll survive this,” John promised.  “We’ll stay alive and give our team the biggest window of opportunity to find us.”

It took Rodney a moment to place those words but when he did, his blood ran cold.  He’d heard those words before, in another impossible situation, suffering from another head wound.

Rodney shrank back, out of John’s reach.  “You’re not real,” he said weakly. “I should have known - - I can’t believe this is happening to me again.”

“Hey, hey,” John tried to approach him but stopped as Rodney scooted further back.  “What the hell are you talking about McKay?”

“Window of opportunity,” he spat.  “That’s what the Sam in my head said when I was trapped in the jumper.  I hallucinated her and now I’m hallucinating you.”

John attempted a smile.  “Why would you hallucinate me?  Last I checked I was nowhere near as smart as you and,” he looked down at his chest, “nope, no breasts there.  I’m pretty sure my hair isn’t blonde either.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Rodney snapped.  “You’re _me_ , you of all people should know how I feel about him.  I’m scared and I’m hurt and if there is one person in the whole world I trust to keep me safe - to not leave me behind -  it’s him.”

John’s face softened in a way that he had never seen before, further proof if he ever needed it that this wasn’t John.  John’s eyes could never look that fond, not when they were directed at him.

“And,” Rodney continued, “you of all people should know that I am an equal opportunities kind of guy when it comes to sex and feelings and whatnot.”

“You - - Rodney, I am  _ not  _ a hallucination.  You - you’ve never told me that before.  Why didn’t I know that about you?”

Rodney shook his head, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw bursts of red, hoping that the hallucination would be gone when he removed them.  “John doesn’t know because I don’t want to put him in a tough position,” Rodney whispered. “If people know his best friend likes men, they’ll assume he does too, at least the stupid ones will and all it takes is one idiot to make an accusation and - - “

John’s lips were rough against his own, chapped and dry and way too tentative to be anything but real.  Rodney’s eyes flew open.

“You’re real,” he accused.  “You’re not just a hallucination, you’re - -”

“Took you long enough,” John drawled.

“You kissed me!”  Rodney touched his lips, his eyes wide, already wanting more.  “You’re real and you kissed me.”

“I’m starting to wonder how hard you hit your head because you’re not normally this slow,” John teased.  

“Will you kiss me again?” Rodney asked.  “I mean, I’ve heard it gets the saliva going?”

“This isn’t about that,” John said.  “This isn’t a survival thing, Rodney - it’s...it’s a living thing.”

“You mean you….”

“Yeah.  I do. You?”

Rodney nodded.  “For years. God, years and years.  Are we doing this? Now?”

John moved closer.  “It could be now or never, buddy.  Don’t know about you but I choose now.”  

Rodney could absolutely get on board with that.

* * *

Rescue came after five days.  

During those five days, Rodney learned that water from a dirty boot tasted faintly of aniseed and the beetle-like creatures tasted like liquid honey when the shell broke under your teeth.

He learned that John hated to be tickled, that the humiliation of having to go to the toilet in the same room as someone else faded after the seventh time and that John’s cock leaned to the left when he was hard.

He learned that John was better at mental arithmetic than he was, that your sense of smell filtered out the stink after a day or so and that he was impossibly, hopelessly in love with John Sheppard.

He also learned that Radek was far smarter than Rodney ever gave him credit for and had managed to narrow the data from the DHD down to twelve addresses.  They found John and Rodney on the sixth address they searched.

“I am sorry it took so long to find you,” Teyla said, her forehead pressed against Rodney’s own, not caring about the smell. “I am sorry that you were left alone in this place for so long.”

“It’s ok,” Rodney said, his eyes moving to search out John, who was being lifted off the ground by Ronon.  “I wasn’t alone.”

“Yeah,” John grinned and clapped Ronon on the back.  “We had each other.”

“Bout damn time,” Ronon remarked, seeing through the words to the truth below it.

“I am relieved to hear it,” Teyla smiled.  “Now, are you both ready to leave this place?”

Rodney smiled, reached out and offered his hand to John, his smile growing wider when John accepted it without question

“Let’s go home.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Mific's art called out to me. When I missed it in the first round of claiming I had to go back and claim it in the second round. No regrets (even though there were lots when I was yelling at myself for signing up to write two fics but it all worked out oUt.
> 
> Thank you once again to otherearthsoutthere for beta-ing.


End file.
